KARACHI, Oct 18: The number of existing customers of PTCL hopefully will not reduce even after the PTCL’s monopoly goes in the year 2003.
This was stated by director-general PTCL (Operations) South, Mohammed Iqbal Waseem, during an informal press briefing here on Friday.
He admitted that new operators in the field will have the benefit of modern technology, but still they would be able to come in competition with PTCL in the international service only.
He said in the local networking, PTCL is working in many such areas where operating the telecommunication network is a cool intensive from business point of view and there is apprehension of a loss.
Iqbal Waseem opined that new operators might compete with PTCL in few big cities, but for overall competition much bigger investment would be required.
The DG South said that PTCL is partially already operating in an environment of competition in the mobile telephone service, internet service, manufacturing of telephone sets and other equipment.
He said subordinate organizations and companies like Ufone, Paknet, TIP and PCI faced competition, still their performance was very good. Ufone from day one gave a good demonstration of performance.
It created an environment of competition as a result of which people started getting better service and the rates came down.
As regards the question of cutting down the rate of line rent and local calls, Iqbal Waseen pointed out that worldwide cost of technology has reduced but there was no significant reduction in the prices of external cable plant and equipment as all these items had to be imported and their prices have soared because of increase in dollar rate.
He said higher investment is required to run the local network and to operate the system of local call whereas for international telecommunication not much expenditure is required and it was because of this reason that local call and line rent is higher here while rates of international calls are lower.
The DG Operation informed that in other countries where local calls are free, the line rent is charged 25-30 dollars a month which is not affordable here.
He said the PTCL is preparing different packages suiting the requirement of the customers. He said if service as compared to cost-benefit is analysed, the Pakistani customers are in a better position and so was the position of Pakistan among SAARC countries.
Iqbal Waseem said that for the convenience of PTC customers, the new connection forms have been simplified. Similarly hiring contract copies are available in all the regions while details of documents that are required for submission have also been printed at the back of the forms which can also be down-loaded from the net.
He said availability of CLI and Voice Messaging has been made easier and can be obtained by dialling Help-Line 106.
He informed that recently started “17” and “18” projects are functioning with high success.
He told the journalists that in order to further improve the working of “18”, the rectification of a fault in a particular exchange is being ensured on the basis of CLI.
Replying to a question, Iqbal Waseen said that PTCL Karachi region has a target for installation of 107,000 new lines by the end of current financial year.
He pointed out that Karachi Region has an installation capacity for 0.99 million telephones and against this there were 0.83 million working telephones.
He said the pending demand for new connections at present stands at 21,245 out of which some 19,800 connections had been provided since July 2002.
The DG Operation said that development plans are afoot for providing the facility in dry areas of Orangi, Korangi, SITE, some areas of Defence and Pak Capital and few pockets of Azizabad.
He said wherever network is available, the demand for these dry areas is being met from spare capacity while for other areas, work is being done on laying of network.
PTCL chief engineer Shamsher informed that this year 35,000 new lines would be provided in STR-II and 37,000 lines in STR-III.—APP
